ON SUIVI POINT

a story of the Mageworlds

by

Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald

“The first thing a free-spacer learns about Suivi
Point,” Ignaceu LeSoit said to his companions, “is
that the people who keep their money here don’t
want to have anything to do with the people who
help them make it. So they want to keep the scum
and riffraff confined to the spaceport district as much
as possible.”

“You could say the same thing about Galcen,” Beka
said. She was taller than either LeSoit or his friend
Pav Eterynic, with a long blonde braid hanging down
her back, and unlike them, she spoke the common
Galcenian of the spaceways with the smooth accent
of a native speaker. Eterynic and LeSoit had been old
hands on board the Sidh when she joined the crew,
and she’d let them take her under their protection
for this liberty excursion in the capital city of the
Suivan asteroid belt. “What’s the second thing that
I’m supposed to learn?”

“That one’s easy,” said Pav. “If something isn’t
for sale on Suivi, then it isn’t for sale anywhere
at all.”

The glidewalk ahead of them finally started
moving.

“Looks like the shopkeepers along here paid for slide
service,” Ignac’ said. “We’re getting into a higher-class
neighborhood already.”

“No class at all would be higher class than this,”
Pav said. “Next set of blast doors coming up—do we
pay the bribe to get through, or make our own fun
on this side? I spotted a couple of places off the last
branch that looked like they might be okay.”

“Right you are,” Ignac’ said. “If you don’t mind
paying twice as much for a steamed dumpling and a
pot of cha’a as you would downtown for a five-course
dinner.”

“There’s other stuff, this side,” Pav said. The glide
walk carried them past a young woman who stood outside a
storefront with the holosign YOUR FANCY flashing
above her. Pav grinned at her. “Hello, doll!”

“Hello, spacer!” the young woman said. “Looking
for a good time?”

“No, thanks,” Ignac’ said. “I had a good time once.
I didn’t like it.”

“Come on, spacer.” She nodded her head at Beka.
“I’m better bouncy than that one, I bet.”

“I’m on liberty—we’re on liberty—for the next
thirty-six hours,” Ignac’ said. “Nothing and no one
could possibly ruin my fun. Standing on my head in
a cloaca wouldn’t even ruin my fun.”

“I didn’t know you hated the ship that much,”
Pav said.

“I don’t hate her,” Ignac’ replied. “She’s a pretty good
ship. It’s just that the cloaca would be dirtside.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The headquarters of Nalosh Guaranty Trust—the
third largest bank on Suivi Point, and working hard
at making second—lay in the Suivi financial district,
hard by Money-Printer’s Square. Grevvit Mancinom
occupied an office suite there, with real fish in the
real water tanks in the outer waiting room, signifying
his ability to maintain useless and decorative objects
in his working space. Mancinom was in the business
of making decisions on his employers’ behalf, and his
decisions had, over time, proved lucky.

At the moment, however, he was doing nothing
more strenuous than half-dreaming at his desk, sipping
at his midmorning cup of cha’a and contemplating
the early financial reports. The bing of an incoming
message brought him to full alertness.

Mancinom set aside both the cha’a and the financials.
Time to do the work he was paid for. “Decision
tree. Parameters?”

“Four options.” The voice this time was human;
whoever was holding down the desk in Operations
would have seen the message get picked up and
come online to respond. “Just came up on the tree:
Operations Raging Manhood, Clever Endorsement,
Roly-Poly, and Dead Blonde.”

“How do their deniability indices look?” Mancinom
asked.

“Deniability’s within normal limits for all four.”

“What about cost/benefit?”

“Dead Blonde and Raging Manhood come up at
the top of the tree for that one.”

“Failure mode?”

“Glad you asked that,” Operations said. “Failure
mode in Raging Manhood has Ahlquist Dahl getting an
extra fiver uptick in popularity. Failure mode in Dead
Blonde gives us a shooting war between Dahl&Dahl
and Suivi Mercantile—bombs in safe-deposit boxes
and tellers found in back alleys.”

“I’m starting to like Dead Blonde,” Mancinom
said. Dahl&Dahl and Suivi Mercantile were the first
and second largest banks on Suivi Point, respectively.
Trouble between them, while unsettling to domestic
tranquility in general, could never be entirely bad for
their next-closest competitor. “What’s the package?”

“Scans from the portside strip report a Level One
Registered Incognito passing through the outer blast
doors. No further info as yet.”

“Right,” said Mancinom. Level One Registered
Incognitos didn’t pass through the scanners every
day, even in a cosmopolitan place like Suivi Point.
He found it hard to imagine what the holder of one
might be doing at the Point’s commercial spacedocks.
“Well, get further, and meanwhile, patch me
through to the executive council. I’m going to need
votes.”

✧ ✧ ✧

By the time the glidewalk had carried Beka, Pav,
and Ignac’ past the young woman at Your Fancy, she
had already forgotten them. A cheery hail of “Hello,
spacer!” echoed through the corridor behind them as
she addressed the next person passing by.

“None of this is for-real ‘dirtside,’ you know,” Pav
said. “Asteroids don’t count.”

“Because,” said Ignac’, “dirt or no dirt, it’s still
artificial gravity, artificial atmosphere, air locks, and
armor-glass the whole way.”

As if to illustrate his point, a double-bolted access
hatch slid by to the right, stenciled with the notice:
WARNING. NO GRAVITY OR ATMOSPHERE FAR SIDE.

Beka said nothing. Her fantasies of a life in space,
half based on her father’s stories, half based on holovid
romances, hadn’t included the guarded air locks and
the garish storefronts, or the smell that wafted on
the air currents from the overhead vents. To reassure herself,
she looked up at the stars through the
transparent roof of the corridor. They were still there,
which was good.

“Stop that,” Ignac’ muttered. “We’re almost at the
main air lock to downtown. If you look too much like
a newbie, the price will go up.”

A sign ahead of them flashed, ONE STREET, and
Pav said, “Here’s where I say good-bye. Catch you
when you get back.”

“Be careful,” Ignac’ said. “Captain’ll skin you if
you get in trouble.”

Pav laughed. “What he said was, ‘Don’t get in
trouble: I can hire new crew cheaper than I can bail
you out.’ Don’t worry, I’ll find someone to buddy up
with. You stay out of trouble yourself.”

“I’ll do that,” Ignac’ said. “ ‘No-Trouble LeSoit’ is
what they call me back home.”

The glidewalk carried Beka and Ignac’ steadily away
from Pav Eterynic and the commercial spaceport,
toward the massive set of blast doors that restricted
access to the rest of the asteroid settlement. After a
few moments, Beka said, “Where is home, anyway?
You never mentioned.”

“I never got that drunk,” Ignac’ said. “I’m for finding
my fun away from the Strip this time—think you
can fake being a hotsy-totsy high-class lady, Galcen
Girl?”

Beka smiled a little. “I think I can handle that.”

“Good enough.” Ignac’ paid the suggested gratuity
listed on the plate by the blast doors for passage-without-body-search,
waited for the door to open, and
hopped onto the glidewalk on the far side. “Come on,
or miss the fun.”

The corridor was wider on this side of the main
doors, and the shops, though catering to spacers, looked
somewhat less tawdry. Ignac’ was scanning from side
to side, clearly looking for something. He spotted it,
and sprinted over to the nonmoving walkway that
bordered the glidewalk.

He looked back over his shoulder at Beka as she
came to join him. “This isn’t an invitation. But the
next part of this expedition will involve a snug-shack.
You game?”

The sign over the building’s doorway advertised
“Rooms by the Hour,” and the automated panel beside
it displayed a list of prices and options. Beka looked
at it curiously. Places like this had never featured in
her father’s tales; she began to suspect that he had
edited the stories a bit for family consumption.

“One is if you want to wash up after, two is if you
want to wash up before, and many is all the baths,
showers, and hand washes that you want.”

“Real water?”

“Nothing but the best for us spacers,” Ignac’ said.
He slid his pay card into the slot on the machine’s
face, waited until the countdown reached “enough,”
then took Beka’s right hand and placed it beside his
left hand on the scanner screen. A light glowed inside
the screen, and the scanner binged.

“There we are,” he said. “Your right hand will
open the door to room—“ he squinted at the screen
“—number Fourteen Alfa, for the next thirty-six hours.
So will my left hand.”

“Just like that?”

“They’ll be selling our palm prints, of course,” Ignac’
said. “To people who want to know who’s come through
the port. That’s why the room’s so cheap. But I figure
that anyone who’s interested already knows.”

He turned back to the street.

“Aren’t we going to go in?” Beka asked.

“Not yet. Next step, shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“We won’t have much fun downtown if we show
up dressed in ship’s coveralls.” Ignac’ smoothed down
his moustache with his left hand, then offered his arm
to Beka in a courtly gesture. “Come, my lady—the
galaxy-famed secondhand clothes shops of Suivi Point
await our pleasure.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The executive council of Nalosh Guaranty Trust was
in special session via conference flatvid, each member
chiming in from his or her own office in response to
Mancinom’s request for priority authorization.

“What’s the consensus?” asked Sahe, the elegant
member from Suivi’s Tarn Gate district. “Ops likes this
one a lot, and I have to say it has its attractions.”

Council member Orfan Roos said, “We’ve been
spending a lot of money—”

“Not all that much, actually,” Mancinom said. “Less
than what gets spent every month on exotic plants
and original artwork for the main lobby.”

“That’s public outreach and support for the arts,”
Sahe retorted. “Our image—”

“A lot of money,” Roos said firmly, “that needs to
be justified by a return, maintaining an address with
a years-long paper trail leading back to Ahlquist Dahl
at Dahl&Dahl. If we don’t use it for something—”

“But is this the best possible something?” inquired
yet a third council member. “If it doesn’t work,
then we’ve knocked a fraction off our profits for
nothing.”

“It is necessary to speculate in order to accumulate,
” Sahe replied. Her image in the members’
flatscreens made a shake-and-release gesture with one
hand. “Sooner or later one has to throw the dice. I
say today.”

One by one, the other member nodded in response.
“Well, then,” said Roos. “Mancinom—how late in the
actions can we change from Dead Blonde to Raging
Manhood and still be credible?”

“At the point violence becomes necessary,” Mancinom said.

“Keep both options open, then, as long as possible.
We’ll take either course. Now—what’s our
package?”

“As it happens,” Mancinom said, “the package is in
fact female, and is in fact blonde. I think our luck is
in.” The members’ flatscreens switched to showing a
grainy image of a young woman in a spacer’s coverall. A time-tick in the corner showed that the picture
had come from that morning’s security cameras at the
portside locks.

“You’re the best one to judge,” Roos admitted.
“What more can you tell me?”

“That the clock’s running. Ship’s patches on the suit
she’s wearing tell me that she’ll be away again in less
than thirty-four hours.”

“Who’s that walking beside her?” Sahe asked. “With
the moustache.”

“Same ship designation,” Mancinom said. “An
expendable. If we go with Dead Blonde, he’s history.
If we go with Raging Manhood, he’s the outrage that’ll
fuel the assassination of Ahlquist Dahl.”

“Poor Ahlquist. Either way, he’s not going to have
a happy day.”

Roos snorted. “’Poor Ahlquist’ my ass. He was the
node point of a three percent decline in our fortunes
over the last two quarters. Mancinom, you’ve
got project lead—do we go for Raging Manhood or
Dead Blonde?”

“Dead Blonde’s on top by five points,” Mancinom
said.

“Dead Blonde it is then. Brief us again in thirty
four hours.”

✧ ✧ ✧

An hour after they had left the snug-shack, Beka
and Ignac’ returned carrying packages wrapped in yellow paper and tied with string. Careful shopping had
netted them dirtside clothing that fit them well enough
for a night on the town. None of the garments had
labels, but Beka could see where they’d been snipped
out; she was willing to bet that a deep scan of the
fabric would reveal the designers’ watermarks.

“You or me?” Ignac’ asked as they entered the
snugshack lobby.

“Let me,” Beka said. “It’ll do both of our reputations
no end of good.”

She reached out her right hand and touched the back
wall of the lobby, inside the outlined palm plate. Part
of that wall slid up, revealing a dimly lit hallway.

He nodded to where the flickering blue script beside
another palm plate read 14A. Again Beka palmed the
plate, and again part of the white-metal wall slid up,
revealing a room beyond. Beka entered and tossed
her purchases onto the center of the large bed in the
middle of the room. Then she took a step back, put
her hands on her hips, and said, “I sure hope you
didn’t pay a lot for this.”

“No more than I was willing to,” Ignac’ said.

He tossed his packages onto the bed next to hers.
The room’s water facility was a plain slab with a drain
in the far corner, a nozzle pointing straight down from
overhead, with a convenience made of stainless steel
beside it. Neither shower nor convenience had any
screen or covering around them.

“The setup,” Beka said, “assumes a certain degree
of familiarity between the occupants of this room.”

Ignac’ was looking over a set of buttons by the side
of the bed. He pressed the top button experimentally,
and the blank white walls transformed into a decent
holo of a forest scene. The water facility, unfortunately,
remained unchanged.

“I’ll wait outside in the hall, if you insist,” he said.
“Or I can promise to avert my eyes while you freshen
yourself and dress, if you’ll do the same for me.”

“That sounds good,” Beka said. “You can go first.”
She lay down on the far side on the bed, facing away
from the facilities, and was asleep and snoring before
Ignac’ had even started the shower.

When she awoke, she was alone in the room under
a light sheet, and the lighting had been dialed back
to “subdued.” The woodland scene had ambient noises
with it, the sounds of wind and distant running water
and the calls of unknown forest creatures. She was
still wearing her ship’s coveralls, buttoned, zipped,
and snapped to the neck. Ignac’ must have pulled
off her boots, though, since she didn’t remember
doing it for herself.
She pulled off the sheet and stood. A note on the
door read, “Out for food, back soon—LS.”

The bedside control panel had a dial that ranged
from white to black. Beka put her finger on it and
moved the wheel toward white; the lights came up.

Ignac’s bundle of secondhand clothing had been
opened and its contents folded on one of the room’s
two chairs. Her own packet, still tied, rested on
the other chair. Beka pulled it open and took out a
pearlescent bodice with trousers and loose overjacket
in white spidersilk. A pair of light grey shoes—since
space boots wouldn’t fit the role of a civilian on a
holiday—completed the outfit.

There was no sense in putting it on over a grubby
body, though. Beka could feel the accumulated dirt
that shipboard sonics wouldn’t remove, plus her own
night sweat. She glanced at the door, put a towel
where she could grab it in a hurry if the door started
to slide, and stripped.

She was wearing the bodice-and-pants combo and
brushing out her hair when the door finally did open.
Ignac’ appeared, carrying a plastic bag full of little
boxes.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “You slept like a rock
for over twelve hours. I didn’t know how much you
snored.”

“I don’t!”

“My dear young lady, I wouldn’t fib. At least not
about that.” LeSoit was pulling the boxes out of the
bag and opening them on the bedside table. “Have
some breakfast or lunch or something.”

“What’s that?” Beka asked, pointing at one of the
boxes.

“That’s the ‘something,’ ” Ignac’ said. “It was
cheap.”

He pulled out plastic utensils from the bottom of
the bag and handed a set to Beka. “Do you want
some of the blue, some of the brown, or a bit of
the green?”

Beka was suddenly aware of how hungry she was.
“Some of everything.”

Despite Ignac’s remarks, the food—ethnic specialties,
she guessed, from some world or culture she’d never
encountered on Galcen—turned out to be delicious.
Only the hard-learned lessons from her school days at
the Delaven Academy kept her from spilling any of it
on the white bodice. She kept on eating while Ignac’
stepped to the other side of the room, and studiously
ignored the subsequent rustlings and rattlings.

Finally Ignac’ said, “You can look now.”

She turned then, and saw him wearing a not-bad
formal outfit of trousers, tunic, and sash. A brush
with liquid polish had brought his space boots to a
mirror shine.

“Shall we go for a walk?” he said. “The glittering
wonders of the world—or, at any rate, of Suivi
Point—await our pleasure.”

Beka gave him her best finishing-school curtsey.
“Gentlesir, I would be delighted.”

Together they went out the door and down the hall,
and to the street, where the lighting hadn’t changed,
the smells hadn’t changed, and the mixture of working
folks hurrying by and gawkers looking at the sights
had only changed in their faces.

“The usual way to go on liberty,” Ignac’ said, as
the glidewalk carried them onward, “is to put all your
money in your pocket and dress up in your fanciest
clothes, then go to the worst part of town and drink
as much of their most expensive beer as you can in
four hours. You’re practically guaranteed an adventure
doing that.”

“But we aren’t.”

“Not this time. This time we’re going to have some
serious fun, and that means going where the rich folks
go and doing what the rich folks do.”

“That’s not as much fun as you’d think,” Beka
said.

Ignac’ looked at her.

“I mean,” she said hastily, “so I’m told.”

✧ ✧ ✧

“If they spend the whole thirty-six hours in that
snug-shack,” Bimmesh said to his partner, “this op
is blown.”

“So it’s blown. Walk away,” Fane replied. The two
street-level Nalosh Guaranty Trust operatives sat at a
table in the bun-and-biscuit shop a corridor-turning
away from the snug-shack. Fane had his eyes on the
lock-and-trace box that displayed the current location
of the package in question. “Operations doesn’t like
it, that’s their problem.”

“And our paychecks. But I’ve seen the pictures of
the girl—if I was traveling with her, I’d spend the
whole time back at the snug-shack.”

“No. Landun Security has that franchise, and we
don’t have a contract with them . . . wait. What’s this?
Motion outside of coordinate field. Our package is in
play.” Fane shoved the lock-and-trace box across the
table to Bimmesh. “Look at that—package in motion,
not heading back to the docks. Alert the cleaning crew;
we’re going to need ’em.”

✧ ✧ ✧

Beka and Ignac’ took the glidewalk up to the
easement for block twelve, paid the fee, and went
through.

“What happens if we don’t have the money to pay
our way back?” Beka asked.

“I’m glad you’re amused. What I’m saying is, if
money’s tight, you or I can always get a short-term
contract with Contract Security—y’know, ConSec—to
do something down portside, get a pass through the
gates, and off we go.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Do they ask you
to do anything obnoxious?”

“Speaking of which,” Beka said, dropping farther
into the deliberately posh accent, “my blood-alcohol
level is near an all-time low. Do you suppose we can
remedy that? I’d gone to space in the fond hope that
you spacers were a hard-drinking lot.”

“Let’s go somewhere fancy,” Ignac’ said. “I want
a drink with fresh fruit and flowers in it that costs
about a day’s pay.”

“Live music,” Beka said. “I want live music.”

“We’ll have to ask directions, then.”

“No need. We want to find a hovercab and ask the
driver to take us to the Tarn Gate District.”

“Are you sure that you’ve never been here before?
What do they teach you back on Galcen?”

“Nothing useful,” Beka said. “Believe me, I
know.”

The route to Tarn Gate passed through Suivi’s Main
Dome, through the banking district, past the great
mosaic depicting the Spirit of Enlightened Mercantilism,
then through more easements and locks into
the glittering onyx-and-steel vaults and domes of the
extremely rich.

“Looks like the inside of a coffin,” Ignac’ observed,
when at last they emerged from the hovercab.

“The very air you breathe here is high-class air,”
Beka told him. “None of your sleazy recycled stuff,
full of dirty socks, farts, and belches. This air is hand-synthesized
from free-range interstellar nitrogen and
farm-fresh organic oxygen, lightly scented with ozone
for your breathing pleasure.”

“When you say it like that, it does smell different.”

“Damn straight it does.” Beka nodded toward where
a discreet engraved placard in a tinted window indicated
that a restaurant was somewhere inside. “Let’s see what
passes for a quaint little bistro in these parts.”

They sauntered up, and were greeted at the door
by a footman. He looked from Ignac’ to Beka, and
his eyes went wide. “My lady!” he exclaimed.

“None of that,” Beka said, making a five-credit chit
appear and vanish into his hand with the skill of a
magician. “Two, with privacy, if you please.”

They were whisked inside to a booth near the
back. As she’d requested, the room was private; they
could see the bar, but none of the other patrons. The
music being played by the ensemble near the bar
was, indeed, live.

“This is different,” Ignac’ said, his fingers rubbing
the dark surface of the table between them. “What
is it, do you know?”

“I’ve heard of it before,” Ignac’ said, equally straight
faced. “I’d just never seen any.”

“Where did you say you’re from again?”

“I didn’t.”

“Ah, the mysterious stranger,” Beka said, leaning
closer and resting her chin on her laced fingers. “I
so love a mysterious man. I shall have to get you
drunk.”

The drinks, which arrived soon after, had Ignac’ in
a state of wonder. “This doesn’t taste like it has any
alcohol in it at all,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled by the decorations,” Beka said.
“Two of those things would put you on the floor.”

“Do you really think so? Then I believe I’ll have
another when this is done.”

Beka laughed. “A week’s pay, easy come, easy go.”
She held up a finger to summon the waiter.

The waiter, however, did not appear. Instead, two
men, large-shouldered and heavy-jawed, pushed into
the booth and shoved Beka and Ignac’ against the
far wall. Beka felt the muzzle of a blaster pressed
against her midsection.

“No noise,” the man beside her said. His voice was
a high tenor, and he spoke softly.

“What a surprise to find you in a place like
this,” the other man said to Ignac’. His voice was
rougher than his companion’s; otherwise, they were
much of a sameness, with nothing to distinguish
them from the general mass of Suivi’s inhabitants
except their size. “We’d expected to find you down
by the docks.”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong person,” Ignac’ said.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Believe me, we’ve got the right person,” Tenor
Voice said. He turned to Beka and tipped a folder at
her. A Contract Security device with flashing identifier
appeared. “We have no instructions concerning you,
my lady. However, be advised that this is a security
matter.”

“What he said,” the other man said to Ignac’. “Do
you want to walk, or must we drag you?”

“Walk, I think,” Ignac’ said. He turned to look at
Beka. “Don’t worry. If it’s a ConSec matter, they’ll
send word to the ship.”

The men pushed away; the blaster disappeared; then
they were gone from sight, Ignac’ walking between
the other two.

Beka sat back and considered her options. She would
have been more inclined to trust Ignac’s assessment
of the situation if some of her father’s war stories
had not featured less-than-flattering commentary on
the Contract Security of Suivi Point.

“Never trust them if you can’t see both their
hands,” he’d said, “and never let them keep a shipmate overnight.”

She picked up her drink and downed it. Then she
reached across the table, snagged Ignac’s abandoned
drink too, and tossed it back.

“Gun shop,” she said aloud. “I need to find a gun
shop.”

✧ ✧ ✧

“We have contact,” Mancinom said to Operations
over his desktop link. “Target two in play; we’ve got
him.”

Mancinom shook his head, although there was no
one in his office to see. “No one will know, and it
won’t be connected.”

✧ ✧ ✧

Beka might have needed to find a gun shop, but
what she eventually found, in a remote back-tunnel
section of the Tarn Gate District, was a pawnbroker’s
establishment.

She went in, under the sign that said “Cash Sent
Anywhere” in three languages plus another line that
probably said the same thing in an alphabet she didn’t
recognize. The money changer didn’t appear to see
anything odd about a blonde in evening dress walking into his shop.

“Help you?” he asked. His Galcenian had a strong
but unfamiliar accent; she wondered if it belonged to
the same world as the unknown alphabet. He had a
blaster strapped to his hip.

She pointed at the weapon. “How much for
that?”

“Not for sale, this one,” the money changer said.

“Who’s got one, then?”

“I do. Just this one isn’t for sale.”

“Where are the ones you are selling?”

“Back here.” The money changer walked to the
rear of his shop. Objects ranging from clay pots to
musical instruments were stacked against the walls
and arrayed in cases. “It’s all for sale, you show me
some cash.”

Beka pulled out her pay card and slid it across the
counter. “You said you had a blaster?”

“Yeah.” The money changer ran the card through
a reader. “Not enough on this to pay for one.”
He nodded toward the shop door. “You go away
now.”

“Wait.” Beka pulled out a different card. “Try
this.”

The money changer ran it through the reader. His
back straightened a bit. “My lady—”

“None of that. Blasters.”

“Got a nice one. War surplus. You like?” The man
ducked down and pulled a heavy-barreled weapon
from under the counter. “Comes with holster and
everything.”

“Everything includes a full charge?”

“Everything.”

“Got two?”

“My lady!”

“If you have two of these, I’ll buy both.”

“Cost you.”

“You’ve read the card. I’m good for it.”

Beka picked up the blaster. The grip was a bit big
for her hand, but nothing she couldn’t handle. She’d
grown up around such things; her father had taken
her to the range for her tenth birthday to let her start
learning on his own personal weapon.

“When you’re older,” he’d said, “you’ll have body
guards and flunkies galore . . . but there’s no guarantee
that when the bad days come you won’t have to shoot
your own way out.”

Her mother had shaken her head disapprovingly,
but she hadn’t denied the truth of it, either—and she
hadn’t tried to stop the lessons.

Now, under the harsh overhead light, Beka looked
over the sights of the unfamiliar blaster. Her finger
reached the firing stud. The weapon was heavy and
cold in her hand, the power of life and death.

“Two,” she said firmly. “The other one.”

“Coming up.”

The money changer pulled a second, similar weapon
out of another box. “Not so nice, I don’t charge you
as much.”

“I don’t care about pretty. The charge chambers?”

“I got ’em.”

Beka took the charge chamber, snapped it into the
side of the handle. The little red light on the side
read FULL. “Very good.”

“Anything else?” the money changer asked, sliding
Beka’s card back over to her.

“Yes. I want to know where my left hand is.”

The man pointed at her left arm. “Where always is.”

“No,” Beka said. “I’m going to put my right hand
on your palm reader. You’re going to tell me where
the left hand that goes with that right hand is. Got
a problem with that?”

“No, no problem. Cost you more.”

“I have more. How much for you not to tell anyone
about my visit for . . . six hours?”

“Valuable information, your visit.”

“I’ll give you six hundred. That’s a hundred an
hour.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Beka tucked one of the weapons into her waistband and slid
the other into its holster on her hip.
She and the money changer walked to the front of
the store. Beka laid her hand on the palm plate, and
the machine blinked and chinged. The money changer
ran Beka’s card through the reader one more time,
then returned it.

“Your left hand on Fifth and Rabban,” the money
changer said. “No guarantee will stay there long, or
even there still. May have not touched anything sensitive since.”

“I’ll take my chances. Where on Fifth and Rabban?”

“Number Four One Seven. Top and back, letter C.”

“My gratitude,” Beka said.

“And your family’s?” the money changer asked, but
he was asking her retreating back.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Lost trace on the package,” Operations reported
to Mancinom. “Either she’s gone into hiding, or she’s
not touching a sensitive surface, or she’s headed back
to her ship . . . no, wait a minute, she’s back in play,
and heading in the right direction. Just got a visual
lock from a public data point. Do you think it’s time
to give her the trace box?”

Mancinom contemplated the image on his flatscreen
of the package’s most recent encounter with a public
security camera. She’d changed her clothes, replacing
the drab coverall with a stylish trousers-and-jacket
combination, and had put up her long hair into a
complex arrangement of multiple braids.

“She’s taken the bait,” he said. “Under the circumstances,
I almost feel sorry for her.”

“Any idea what the real name is behind her
incog?”

“All we know is that ‘Beka Lokkelar’ shows up
registered as a Level One,” Mancinom said, “and
flagged as connected to both Suivi Mercantile and
Dahl&Dahl.”

“We could find out right now if we pushed.”

“Not without drawing notice,” Mancinom said. “We’ll
have to wait and see what’s left of her incognito after
the scandal-rags are done with it.”

✧ ✧ ✧

Outside the pawnshop, a public signpost with an
interactive map told Beka where Fifth crossed Rabban:
well outside the Tarn Gate district, but close enough
to get there on foot. All she had to do would be stay
away from ConSec, and away from whoever it was
who’d taken an undue interest in a couple of spacers
in search of a drink and a good meal.

The crossing of Fifth and Rabban lay in a residen
tial area, some foot traffic, tunnel oriented and well
inside the shell of the asteroid. Steam and power lines
ran along the left-hand wall of the corridor, past the
safety barrier. Beka reconnoitered around the corner,
her pale dress reflecting the overhead lights. There,
up between two crossings, was a multiple-occupancy
dwelling.

“Hah,” Beka said. “If that isn’t Four One Seven,
you can call me a kwoufer and feed me to the brine
shrimp.”

A green hovercab waited on the surface of the trafficway beside the glidewalk outside Four One Seven,
its lights out and its nullgravs disengaged. When thirty
minutes by Beka’s chronometer had passed and the
hovercab had not responded to another call, she nodded
to herself and slid her newly purchased blaster
from its holster.

“Time to go.”

She walked up behind the vehicle, her pace steady,
approaching it on the driver’s side. When she drew
even with the cab’s back door, she grabbed the handle
and pulled. The door came open. She slid in and
pushed the muzzle of her blaster against the back of
the driver’s head. Only then did she recognize him as
one of the two men who had taken Ignac’ away at the
restaurant. The revelation stiffened her resolve.

“Talk fast,” she said. “What do your people want
with the guy inside the building?”

In spite of everything, she half expected the taxi
driver to respond to her question with a heated denial
of all knowledge. Instead, he shrugged, being careful
not to jar her blaster hand in the process, and said,
“We’re finishing up a contract. If you haven’t got a
contract of your own in force, stay out of the way. You
don’t want this to go to the Labor Board, do you?”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Whose contract?”

“Laedin and Sons. You want to check my
license?”

She pulled her blaster back from the man’s head.

“No, that’s okay. But are you sure you’ve got the
right guy?”

“Sure I’m sure,” the driver said. He reached over
to his right.

“Ah, ah.” Beka pushed the blaster back against his
head. “Don’t try that.”

“Would you put that thing away? Anybody would
think this was your first job.” The driver’s hand came
back up holding a small box fitted with a screen.
The screen showed a blue bugtrace, gently pulsing,
with a bearing and range subscribed. “There. That’s
him. Once he’s dead, that won’t blink, so he’s not
dead.”

“Do you have any objections if I rescue him?”
Beka asked.

“You are—?”

“Kronitz and Spez, Custom Rescues,” she replied.
She took the box from his unresisting hand. “We’re
in the comm-code listings.”

“So long as he handed over the bugtrace, it doesn’t
matter. Is the bug in position?”

“In position,” Ops said. “Fane’s waiting for her.”

“What about the boyfriend?”

“We’re holding him under wraps off-site; we can
make him dead at leisure once this is finished.”

“Very well,” Mancinom said. “Pass to Fane: ‘In
place, on time, and witnesses located. Package should
be at your posit in five; be aware package is now
armed.’ ”

✧ ✧ ✧

The bugtrace showed Beka the direction of Ignac’s
location—somewhere inside Four One Seven, as she’d
expected. She entered the building and found her way
to the proper apartment with only a few wrong turnings.
She touched the lockplate beside the apartment
door.

A familiar tenor voice said, “Welcome, my dear,”
over the annunciator, and the door slid open. Beka
tightened her grip on the blaster and walked in.

The lights were low and the decor of the room was
one of understated elegance. Beka dismissed it at a
glance and concentrated her attention on the room’s
single occupant, and on the blaster he had pointed
in her direction.

“Please,” Tenor Voice said. “Put your blaster down
on the floor before you come any closer.”

Reluctantly, she knelt—straight-backed and folding
gracefully at the knees, the way she’d practiced it in
dancing class every year from six to sixteen—and laid
the blaster on the deep-piled carpet.

“Who the hell
are you guys?” she demanded, standing up again. “And where is Ignac’?”

“That’s not important,” Tenor Voice said. “There are
some people who want to meet you; that’s all.”

“Sending me a text message or a voice-chip wasn’t
good enough for them?”

“Not with you having a Level One Registered Incognito,”
Tenor Voice said. “If you’d come to Suivi Point
openly, in your persona as—who did you say you really
are?—then the situation would be different.”

“My real name is none of your damned business,”
Beka said. “I want to know about Ignac’ LeSoit. The
guy I was having dinner with. That you kidnapped.”

“Through that door,” Tenor Voice said, nodding
toward an interior portal to his right. The location
matched the range and bearing Beka had taken earlier from
the bugtrace. “If you please. Truthfully, we
desire conversation with you.”

Beka glared at him. “So all of this has to do with
me, and not with Ignac’ at all?”

“Quite right,” Tenor Voice said. He pointed to a
gauzy red garment draped over the back of a nearby
chair. “I must insist, however, that you dress properly
for your meeting. Would you indulge me?”

“Say that I don’t?” Beka said. “Say I decide instead
to drop my incognito and buy you, and buy this building, and buy everything that’s in it?”

“They aren’t for sale,” Tenor Voice said. He raised
his blaster. “Now—put on the clothing, my dear young
lady. I promise that all the visual recorders in this room
were turned off a moment after you stepped in.”

She pursed her lips. “If I change clothes, will you
close your eyes while I do it?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I get few enough fringe
benefits in my line of work.”

Beka walked over to the chair and picked up the
loose bundle of red cloth. She frowned at it. “There
isn’t enough material in here to be decent.”

Tenor Voice shrugged. “I suppose not.”

Beka gathered the red gauze in front of her in
what she hoped would pass for a gesture of modesty,
blocking his view of exactly what her own right hand
was doing.

“Please,” she said again. The quaver in her voice
was convincing, she hoped—the fear behind it was
real enough. “Put down the blaster and let me walk
out of here.”

“I’m sorry,” Tenor Voice said. “I’m afraid that isn’t
possible.”

“Then put down the blaster. It’s bad enough having
to change clothes with you watching me—”

“No. Really, we’re on a tight schedule here. You
want to see your boyfriend—”

Beka shot him through the armload of red gauze
fabric, setting it on fire. She dropped the burning
fabric, her left hand coming up to grasp the wrist of
her blaster hand as she held the firing stud down,
spraying the room in front of her with lines of energy
until the sound and smell of it filled her ears and
nostrils. Burn marks appeared on the wall, on the
floor, and on Tenor Voice as he stood amazed, before
falling, still amazed, to the carpet.

Beka eased up on the firing stud.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “He’s just a
friend.”

She wasn’t really surprised when the next room,
equally elegantly appointed, didn’t hold Ignac’—though
it did hold a wide bed with ropes attached to the
posts, and a blindfold and a gag laid ready on the
bedside table. The lock-and-trace box helped her find
the hidden snoop-button soon enough. She pried it
free and took it with her when she went.

✧ ✧ ✧

Bemmish stood leaning against the side of the hovercab.
His part of the operation was over, though he
couldn’t help worrying a bit about how Fane would
handle the supposedly docile package. None of the
earlier photo refs on her had shown her going armed;
the appearance of that blaster had been an unpleasant
surprise, even if it had served to make his handing
over of the bugtrace more convincing.

He had confidence, though, in his partner’s ability
to handle things. Fane was a cool one, not easily
distracted; Bemmish didn’t expect he’d have to wait
much longer before closing down the finished operation and going home.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to feel a blaster
pressed against his back, at the same moment as a
woman’s hand came around from behind him to dangle
a fifty-credit chit in front of his nose.

“You have a choice,” the package’s Galcenian accent
whispered in his ear. “You can consider this a down
payment on enough money to buy a ticket off this
rock to anywhere in the civilized galaxy, you name
the place, or—”

“Or?”

“Or I can blow your spine out.”

“Do I take it I have the pleasure of addressing a
Level One Registered Incognito?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not stupid; I’ll take the money.”

The hand with the credit chit withdrew; the blaster
didn’t. When the hand reappeared it had a tiny round
metal object in it.

“Swallow this,” she said.

“What?”

“Bug and trace. I want to be able to find you. Again,
your choice is do it, or I blow your spine out.”

“You have the blaster. I’ll do it.”

“Open wide,” she said.

He did, and swallowed.

He felt the woman moving away from him. “Now.
Turn around.”

He did so, and was disappointed to find that she’d
stepped back several feet—and was holding the blaster
close to her body. She was leaving him no chance to
take it away from her. He saw its empty holster riding low on her hip, and wondered again where she’d
picked up the firepower—and where she’d learned to
be so cautious with it.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“I’m asking you the same question that I asked
your pal inside,” the young woman said. “Where’s my
partner? You know, the free-spacer with the moustache who was with me at the restaurant. The guy
you kidnapped.”

“Take me to him,” she said. “And if you try to
make a getaway, I’ll shoot you before you can run.
I’ve already killed a man, and people tell me it gets
easier with practice.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The man walked. Beka followed. She kept well back,
using the locator button to keep him in sight. He
paused at a door with the HARD VACUUM designation
stenciled on it. Beka caught up with him.

“Through here,” he said.

“You have a pressure suit and oxygen with you?”

“No. The sign is lying.”

“Is it really?” Beka said. “You go first.”

She stepped back and watched as the man undogged
the hatch. It looked like he’d told her the truth. No
sound of a vacuum hiss followed the action, and he
had no problem opening the door.

“In,” she said.

He ducked and entered. She followed. Her feet felt
light; the gravity was lower here on the other side.
Corridors full of pipes and conduits stretched out in
front, behind, and up and down from them.

“This way,” the man said, dropping into a tunnel
that intersected ninety degrees down. Beka followed;
they didn’t fall fast. The speed of descent slowed the
farther down they went. Then the man she was following
slowed and stopped, hanging in midair—they’d
come to a null-gravity zone, caught between two gravity
generators, pulled equally in either direction. He
kicked out against the bulkhead and shot through
another opening ninety degrees to the right.

Beka stopped where he had; followed; and crossed
the threshold into a larger space. As soon as she’d
entered, several things caught her attention at once.

The first was Ignac’, tethered to the overhead by one
ankle. The second was a body floating in midair. And
the third was the man she’d been following, chopping
down on her wrist, knocking the blaster out of her
hand as he swung behind her with his arm around
her neck in a chokehold.

Beka yanked the second blaster from where it had
once again been concealed beneath her jacket and sent
it spinning toward Ignac’ in a long flat trajectory.

The arm around her neck tightened. Her vision
grew red, then started to fuzz to black—then, came
the sound and heat of a blaster bolt passing by her
head, and the pressure relaxed. She shook her head,
clearing it, drawing in deep lungfuls of air. Then she
snatched the first blaster out of the air where it had
come to rest, slowly spinning around its center of
mass, holstered it, and shoved off from the bulkhead
to propel herself upward.

“Glad to see you,” she said to LeSoit, as soon as she
was level with him. Her voice came out in a hoarse
croak. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Glad to see you, too,” he replied. He gestured
toward the stranger, floating limp just beyond the
maximum extent of LeSoit’s tether. “If you could
give me a hand here—that fellow over there has
the key to my leg irons in his pocket. I was able to
incapacitate him earlier, but he floated out of reach
before I could search him.”

“That wasn’t very cooperative of him,” Beka said.
She was already maneuvering to grab the man and go
through his pockets until she found the key.

“No. It’s a good thing other people are more obliging—thanks
for providing the last-minute hardware,
by the way.”

“No problem. My father always said you don’t bring
cheese sandwiches to a gunfight. I used to wonder
exactly what he meant by it.”

“And now you don’t?”

“No. Not anymore.”

✧ ✧ ✧

“The operation didn’t go exactly as planned,” Mancinom
admitted to the other members of the executive
council. “But still, not a bad outcome. A dead man
in Ahlquist Dahl’s private love nest is nearly as good
as a dead girl.”

“Imagine the look of surprise on dear Ahlquist’s
face when he learns that he has a love nest,” Sahe
replied, pouring a cup of cha’a from the warmer on
her desk. “And who would have suspected that Bemmish would sell us out?”

“Because I finally got through to the ID behind
that Level One Registered Incognito.”

“It was that high-powered?”

“Look at it this way,” Mancinom said. “If Dead
Blonde had gone off without a hitch, Beka Lokkelar’s
death would have made a scandal big enough to turn
Dahl&Dahl and Suivi Mercantile into piles of smoking
rubble. But she got clear under her own power, so
whatever she did with Fane and Bemmish, it’s best
to let it lie.”

“Agreed,” said Roos. “Put in a ticket with ConSec
on the quiet, all the same, and tell them to keep it
open. You never know when something like that might
come in handy.”

✧ ✧ ✧

When Pav Eterynic returned to the Sidh, two
minutes before liberty expired, he was amazed to learn
from the watch-stander on duty that Beka Lokkelar
and Ignac’ LeSoit had returned to the ship some
sixteen hours before.

“What’s the matter?” Pav asked, when he encountered
Beka a few minutes later in the ship’s mess.
“Miss the old rust-bucket that much?”

“No,” Beka said, refilling her mug with cha’a from
the big forty-cup urn. “I didn’t have as much fun
dirtside as I expected to, that’s all.”

“You should have stuck with me,” Pav said contentedly.
“We’re going to be in low orbit before my
hangover even starts.”